For example, I have a laptop with VMWare running on it. I run my own named that serves the VMWare client machines, even when I'm not connected to any "real" network. So I want resolv.conf always to point to my own machine. However, at the same time, I want to take advantage of the fast DNS servers on-site wherever I am, so I want my /etc/named.conf forwarders line updated with the DNS servers that DHCP gave me. In addition, if, by checking the IP address and domain name, I determine that I'm either at home or at work, I want to set my /etc/smb.conf workgroup name appropriately, so I can be a "member" of the site-appropriate NT domains. And various other things too peculiar to mention.
In order to accomodate all this, I began by writing my own site-specific patch to pump. However, I don't really want to have to recompile every time I change configuration. So clearly the right answer was to have pump pass its data on to an easily updated external entity, such as a Perl or Bourne script, that will then do the real damage. That's what this patch allows.
Several people have reported success with this patch and no-one has yet reported any failures or problems, but that doesn't mean you won't be the first.
Last updated: 6/22/2000
graham (at) mhn.org